Props

As the opening sequence is not very long, I have decided not to use many props because they are not needed.

Gun - We decided to film a close up of a gun on the kitchen work top which is then followed by a shot of the dead body.This gives the audience the idea that the man has been killed by that gun.Murders are a common theme in thrillers and creates a scary atmosphere and fear among the audience.Also when researching for my thriller I found out that the majority of people I interviewed believed that a gun is a good prop to use for a thriller and I have put this to action. Obviously the gun is a toy and is definitely not real. The gun is the most important and the most effective prop used in our thriller because it is the murder weapon and is only revealed at the end of the sequence. We used a toy gun because it would be too difficult and too dangerous to use and obtain a real gun.



Mug - The coffee mug is shown a number of times in our opening sequence. As we were filming in the kitchen we just took a coffee mug from there. However we did choose carefully on which coffee mug to pick and we decided on the one we used because it was plain and a dark colour which fits in more with the tone of the thriller. We also made sure that the mug was clean as well.







Milk/Kettle - Again as we are filming in the kitchen it was easy for us to obtain these two items to use in our thriller. We needed the milk and kettle because the sequence involves the murderer making a cup of coffee and then drinking this coffee after murdering somebody.







Credits - The title of the thriller is shown on a background and the background is extremely interesting. Oliver's dad is a teaching assistant and the students he taught had to write a story and one student just repeatedly wrote 'dead' because that is how he said he felt at the time of writing the story and he is only in year 4. This was easy to obtain because Oliver's dad had it as the class had to hand the work in. We then thought that it would be a could idea to use this as the background for the title instead of just a plain black background because it is more effective and death is a key convention in thrillers.It also reminds me of a scene in the thriller classic 'The Shining' (1980), where the character who we think has been writing a novel, has actually been writing one phrase over and over again on hundreds of sheets of paper.

We also had other props on show such as butter, plants, bins etc. and this was done to make our thriller seem like normal everyday life which means the audience can relate to the thriller more and therefore making it scarier for the audience because they believe it could now happen to them. There is also a shot used showing the kitchen which shows normal kitchen appliances to reinforce the fact that this could be normal everyday life. There is also some alcohol placed on the kitchen table which could imply that the murderer has drinking problems which is one of the reasons he has just committed a murder. All of these props are extremely easy for us to obtain which is very useful. The props are an important part of he mise-en-scene and are key in thrillers. They can be very effective if used in the right way.